EXCLUSIVE: Up until this week, fans of the NCIS franchise were led to believe that it was Mike Franks who had the biggest impact on Gibbs landing a job with the military police. And for the most part, it's still true -- except we now know that his rough-around-the-edges boss doesn't deserve all the credit.
Fascinated by how "unexpected people come in and out of our lives who are sometimes being the most influential," Showrunners David J. North and Gina Monreal decided to craft a story that involved Gibbs finding inspiration from the unlikeliest of people -- his ill-tempered landlord. Titled "Blue Bayou" after Linda Ronstadt's 1977 cover of the Roy Orbison classic ("I feel so bad I got a worried mind, I'm so lonesome all the time"), Gibbs (Austin Stowell) forms a unique connection with Ruth (London Garcia), whom he briefly met in the November 25 episode titled "One Flew Over."
The two not only spend much-needed time together -- he helps her track down some losers who stole her stuff -- she also encourages Gibbs not to be "a little bitch" about getting through the NIS training. "You're a damn good big sister," he tells her after he graduates.
"I've always been fascinated by the fact that in the NCIS canon, we know Gibbs kills Pedro Hernandez and then suddenly he's an NIS agent," North tells Deadline. "Gina and I just talked a lot and realized we'd love to see a story with Ruth and Gibbs. We think it's really a story that matches who Gibbs is. He met Ruth when he had no one and he couldn't even tell his own father that he had left the Marines. Ruth was there for him when no one else was. In the end we learn that Ruth really was the one that led him to believe that this could be a career for him. She saved him."
For Garcia, it was an unexpected thrill to get the call that she was wanted back on the Origins set after playing such a small role in the November 25 episode. "It was just me, who's kind of a slumlord, showing an apartment. I did the one episode and thought, I just want to make sure that they got what they wanted," said Garcia, whose previous experience includes small roles on This is Us, American Crime Story, Unprisoned, and 9-1-1: Lone Star. "When I read the script [for Blue Bayou], I couldn't believe it. The story is so incredible to me. Every time I read it, my face was wet. I cried every time."
Stowell said some of the episode -- like when Gibbs and Ruth spend quiet time together doing puzzles -- was highly personal.
"I talked to David and Gina quite a bit about my personal life," he tells Deadline. "I'm a puzzle person and my father passed away a few years ago, so I draw a lot on that to this role. There's so much of Gibbs that comes from my relationship with my dad. And part of what helped me get through that time were puzzles. I was living in L.A. at the time, it was in the middle of Covid, and I had a neighbor who became aware of what was going on, and we would go for a walk pretty much every day. So he bought me a puzzle, and then it became a bit of a tradition that we were passing puzzles back and forth to each other. I really hope that he watches this episode."
Shooting those puzzle scenes was a breeze, explains Garcia; it was all improvisation so they would make up different conversations and end up laughing about it afterwards. But the meaning behind them was important to convey to viewers.
"There's that comfort level you get with people where you can be around each other without talking," explains Garcia. "There's so much they could be talking about that they don't want to talk about it. And the fact that neither one of them is pushing each other is comfortable in itself."
Stowell appreciates how the episode "sets up so much of why Gibbs is the way he is." His stress over learning about Ruth's fatal diagnosis leads to him to believe that he failed his psych evaluation, which in turn makes him a magnet for bar fights. Franks (Kyle Schmid) ends up hiring Gibbs for NIS because Ruth dressed him down for not believing enough in their mutual friend.
"He's been hurt time and time again by those he holds closely, first with his family. And now this is another huge, let's call it a thorn in his side that lives with him forever," Stowell tells Deadline. "Yes, he does eventually get the job at NIS. Yes, he goes on to have this incredible career that we all know and ends up in Alaska and seems to be happy there and finds his peace. His relationship with Ruth has to be a direct catalyst for that."
"This is where we get to know the real guy," continues Stowell. "It's what I have loved about taking on this challenge from the very beginning. I thought it was such a unique opportunity to play a character before they become the hero. We're learning how he picked himself up. We're learning how he built the foundation of a fortress that is Leroy Jethro Gibbs, standing in the river in Alaska. That to me is a real gift to explore as an actor, but also so interesting for the audience to get to see how the man was made."